Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We often use the vocabulary and ceremonies of a prescribed practice without actually doing anything worthwhile.

Daily standup, peer review, prototype, minimum viable product, agility, AI, agent, etc.: examples of vocabulary that makes it appear as if something good is happening.

Do they have a minimum viable product? Is there product much more than the minimum? If, “Yes,” they are merely repeating vocabulary without meeting any definition of such.

“Of course we have daily standup meetings,” said someone when asked about what they do each day.

Attend the daily standup meeting and scratch your head. They actually meet daily and they are standing up. Are they, however, doing anything that accomplishes work?

If the answer is, “No.” that is a ceremony and nothing more.

There is some old saying about what we are told to do, what we document that we do, what we tell people when they ask about what we do, and what we actually do. The point of the old saying is that, “We do what we want, when we want, and how we want. And stop bothering us, we have work to do.”

This is real life on real projects worked by real people. These real people are told the vocabulary and ceremonies they are assigned. Sometimes these real people really use those items as assigned. Sometimes they don’t. These real people aren’t evil. They are busy and are really trying to accomplish real work.

The question I ask is, “Why are we telling these well-meaning people to lie?”

These well-meaning people know the vocabulary and the ceremonies. They would like to be in a project where they could try this vocabulary and these ceremonies. Real-life disturbances always seem to disturb real-life, and they do what they can.

Let’s have some honesty and candor without punishment. “We want to use these words and perform these tasks as prescribed. People push us in other directions. We bend because we are told to. We don’t resist because we need the paycheck (I do have a mortgage and braces on a child’s teeth). Sorry.”

Let is be acceptable for such honest and candid speech. That is something that us managers can do. I think the word is “agile.”